Was putting almost nothing in the ROTJ/TFA gap a mistake?

[ChrisIII]

In the new continuity, the Empire's remaining forces are defeated fairly quickly at Jakku-an event shown in multiple Star Wars media (The Aftermath novels, Lost Stars, the Battlefront games, etc). Then there's pretty much almost three decades of the New Republic at (relative) peace, the remaining Imperial worlds either join the Republic or are disarmed, although the First Order forms in secret in the Unknown regions and there's some shakeups here. Luke and Han raise Kylo, and then he goes to Luke's academy, and Luke seems to spend a number of years piecing together what he can of the Jedi before teaching a new generation. Things start to go wrong only about five years prior to the beginning of the sequel trilogy, with Leia forming the resistance to counter the rise of the FO-mostly ignored by the Republic-and Ben's fall.


This kind of doesn't leave I think much creative room for future movies/TV shows/cartoons although it's certainly a lot of time. Most post-ROTJ works we have now pretty much stick close to the sequel trilogy (Poe Dameron, the upcoming Resistance) and we don't know too much about Favreau's show yet.

The original EU of course had the war stretched much further, with various attempts by the Imperial remnant to topple the New Republic that last for about fifteen years (and then the Vong and Swarm stuff happens), and Luke managing to get the Jedi up and running fairly early and for many years, although with of course it's own ups and downs. All naturally non-canon of course.

Now of course the creators of the new trilogy wanted to not have any of the old EU or having to read some kind of novel be a precedent (Which is kind of funny, since Abram's Trek film makes a bit more sense with the "Countdown" comic)....but "and then for a long time, nothing happened" just seems a bit on the boring side.

[Zero Hunter]

Well with the years of fighting in the Clone Wars and then the rise of the Empire and them taking everything over and then the open warfare between the Rebels and the Empire that was a good 30-35 years worth of non stop drama. Plus the Empire wrecked so many worlds that it makes sense that after they fell most of the worlds would need decades to repair the damage done to them.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

This goes back to the EU being wiped out. At the end of the day they couldn't have a new series that relied on a litany of material most of the audience won't have seen the material for.

[Sacred Knight]

I don't think so. In fact, if the First Order was going to be taking over like its been doing in the new saga, I think its flat out necessary to at least know that in between the New Republic had more or less their run at things, and thus a pretty peaceful situation. Its the fact that it successfully rebuilt itself in the Empire's wake and had some decades of prosperity that makes it known that the Alliance WAS successful, even though we jump back in a few decades later to new troubles. And even then, if someone wanted to do stories set in that time period, there's any number of smaller potential conflicts to write about.

If they would have had endless strife from the end of ROTJ all the way up to TFA, the currently invalid complaint that Luke, Han, Leia and the Rebels fought for nothing in the OT would suddenly have validity to it.

[WebLurker]

I don't think it's a mistake since there's no need to do stuff in that era and waiting until the sequel trilogy is finished ensures that the writers know what they need to fit into. The Clone Wars is a textbook example the dangers of filling in an era of the timeline before a more authoritative source reveals what "really" happened; the Legends comics and novels pretty much accounted for everything, then the TV show came and revised those three years completely, making the Legends version of the Clone Wars a mess that tries to smash two mutually contradictory together into a whole that can't hold its own shape.

That aside, just because there's no major galactic events doesn't mean that smaller scale adventures, like the Last Shot novel, couldn't be made to fill in the gaps.

[jbmasta]

It's an interesting idea of what happened across the galaxy when the Empire fell. All the planets with a power vacuum that may not have had a Rebellion presence, or the allies who were allies no longer due to the lack of common enemy. The Empire outposts that never got the news about the death of the Emperor and fought their own fronts. Ex-Empire forces going rogue.